This guest post is written by Tiago Svn.

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The ‘90s saw the PlayStation showing up with zero reputation, adding a literal whole new dimension to games, making it the norm, and crushing all competition with ease. We’re now in 2026, and Sony struggles to make the PlayStation appealing to just about anyone. How did the king forget so much?

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about how Sony’s planned no-disc future is a slap in the face of so many fans, and I absolutely agree. Sadly, there are many other ways in which Sony is doing the exact opposite of what it once did to conquer not just the market and its consumers, but the hearts and imagination of multiple generations of gamers.

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First, we have Sony’s constant price hikes. These suck, because paying more just sucks, especially at a time when more expensive somehow equates to less build quality and durability, but it’s a spiritually wrong strategy for Sony. The OG PlayStation might’ve beaten Sega because it jumped headfirst into the 3D realm and delivered dozens of thousands of groundbreaking and mind-opening titles while the Sega Saturn was too afraid to fully embrace the revolution, but it won the first important battle because of pricing.

Yes, Sony’s awful price policies go directly against one of its most iconic victories-one that has been recorded and should be taught in business schools everywhere. Long story short, instead of talking about Sony’s many truly interesting specs, the Sony exec responsible for first presenting the console simply took to the stage to say “299,” alluding to the console’s $299 price, which was $100 cheaper than the Saturn, and then left.

In the end, hardware matters, and Sony’s sure did 3d graphics better than Sega’s, but in the long run, you really need people to buy your product. That’s how you get publishers and developers interested in making cool games for your console to win the war with. Sony got that ball rolling by matching a great price with the best ad campaign of all time.

The ad campaign for the original Sony PlayStation ignored not just the mascots populating Nintendo and Sega ads, but even all manner of gameplay footage, focusing instead of inviting players to edgy, grim and frightening landscapes. A whole new reality that no ad aimed at kids could hope to compete with. PlayStation ads were aimed at teenagers and adults, but also worked with kids because, well, kids wanted to be cool like teenagers and adults.

The PlayStation and PS2 ads were nothing like today’s ads, or any day’s ads for that matter. Instead of promising consumers they’d totally become cool if they acquired the target product, PlayStation ads barely even showed consumers the object that they were selling. Many of these were even scary as hell, so the case could be made for Sony being so confident in their product that it was running the worst-possible ad campaign just to give the competition a chance, but no. These ads were awesome.

Despite its often horrifying nature, the PlayStation Experience never failed to create even more enticement than repulsion, challenging the masses in a way that no impressionable kid or adventure-seeking teenager could resist. And, even though the games never really reflected the actuality of what was presented on screen, nobody ever felt cheated.

The PlayStation was a physical console, a product, but the PlayStation experience transcended that. Likewise, though these ad were meant to fulfill the most seductive part of the capitalist agenda, you could still enjoy and be inspired by all the artistry and passion put into every single one of these ads without spending a dime on Sony’s products.

The PS2’s killer ad and sales run was followed up by PS3’s 2006 launch. Surprisingly, it was marred by an unimpressive lineup and hardware that didn’t match what had been promised, and things wouldn’t get better for a while. Even though the PS3 era began with the same spine-tingling ads you’d expect, they ended up a casualty of Sony’s attempt to come back during the 7th generation console war. PS3’s later ads ditched the surreal landscapes and peculiar characters, opting instead for many conventional commercials that explained the console’s actual capabilities in a humorous fashion.

In Sony’s defense, these ads sure were funny.

And, once again, the return of the magical “299” did, at the very least, coincide with a comeback against the Xbox 360, though that probably had a lot more to do with the release of Sony’s improved PS3 and the arrival of better exclusives such as “Uncharted 2,” not with the axing of the ads that everybody loved. No one is preventing you from doing the “weird” ads just because you’re also doing more conventional ones. Especially as they’d always done such a great job of infecting and inspiring the collective unconscious, whereas most other ads only spoke to our capitalism-incepted consumer needs.

During the PlayStation 4 era, ads mostly just put real people in live-action scenarios straight out of a video game, at a time when video game movie adaptations were still far from even accepted by the public. Another famous PS4 ad walked players through the memories they’d made over many years of playing PlayStation in various cozy bedrooms.

Though neat on the surface, gamers used to see PlayStation ads as the absolute trailblazers that they were. By becoming merely celebratory of cozy times from the past, Sony didn’t paint a bright picture of PlayStation’s future.

During the PlayStation 5 era, Sony released one weird ad, and, even though I absolutely love the gesture, it reads more like a remembrance of great times past, less like a new, and very welcome, attempt at blowing the minds of all the people who’re no longer aware of PlayStation’s greatness of ads past.

Sony just needs to re-learn its own lessons to come back to the top

In the ‘90s, smaller teams could do what we now call AAA games with middling budgets. We no longer live in that time. Nowadays, the only two roads seem to be an indie game done mostly by one guy and the score by someone else, or a AAA title with a team of hundreds and a budget of hundreds of millions. Except we know that’s bunk simply by looking at “Astro Bot” and “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33,” two GOTY winners made by small teams and a reasonable budget. Hell, “Expedition 33” cost $10 million to make. For comparison’s sake, the budget for “Final Fantasy VII” was $45 million, and yeah, I’m not talking about the remake.

Break out your inflation calculators!

You can, and should, totally go small and increase video game output. The PS1 had a library of over 10,000 games. The PS5 has a little over 1,000, and even that number paints too pretty a picture of its library. Most of the games are either remasters, remakes, or non-exclusives. That’s the mark of a console known for extraordinary story and character-driven stories destroyed by an attempted pivot to a live service model of games.

And I get that the world of games would inevitably change. As the barrage of remakes and remasters we can no longer stand has taught us, one can’t really create the future just by continually trying to re-capture the lightning in a bottle by making a shinier version of the past—unless that very past told you time and again that you need to make games, new games, wild games, and try to lure people in in the most original way that you can find. If people feel the passion, it will sell; even if they scare the crap out of the public—perhaps even more so.

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Image Credit: Benedict Calano